The Breath of Dawn Read online

  © 2012 by Kristen Heitzmann

  Published by Bethany House Publishers

  11400 Hampshire Avenue South

  Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

  www.bethanyhouse.com

  Bethany House Publishers is a division of

  Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan

  www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

  Ebook edition created 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  ISBN 978-1-4412-6051-2

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

  Scripture quotations identified KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by John Hamilton Design

  Cover seascape photography by Kristen Heitzmann

  Author represented by the Donald Maass Literary Agency

  To Everleigh Grace,

  my joy and delight

  But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

  Matthew 6:33 KJV

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  1 2 3 4 5

  6 7 8 9 10

  11 12 13 14 15

  16 17 18 19 20

  21 22 23 24 25

  26 27 28 29 30

  31 32 33 34 35

  36

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Kristen Heitzmann

  Back Ads

  Back Cover

  Prologue

  Seeing Morgan standing still as stone beside the freshly opened earth, Noelle St. Claire Spencer believed a man could shatter. One touch, and he might crumble and blow away. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

  Heat emanated from his tiny infant, who slept unaware that her daddy looked as close to the grave as the wife he buried. Jill. Noelle tightened her hold on the motherless babe, feeling her own little boy press tighter against her legs, as he sensed a magnitude of loss he hadn’t before encountered. With one long arm, Rick held his family and one tiny part of Morgan’s in mute protection.

  Tall, silent as a sentry, his eyes mirrored the pain in hers. How did this happen? No, not how—why?

  Her throat swelled with tears, her mouth sour with the bitter taste of grief, as she looked into the baby’s face. Would she carry even a vague memory of the mother who’d held her inside, nestled and crooned and stroked her, anticipating moments of wonder and delight? Who would tell her?

  She could see the silence growing in Morgan—he who’d wielded words with the skill of an empire builder, who’d lived potently and vibrantly. Once before she’d watched him fade. Now he seemed colorless. He raised his face, needing more, another moment to hold on as the priest concluded the prayers over the casket. “We entrust this soul to God in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

  Those closest to the grave crossed themselves—except for Morgan, motionless. She touched his arm.

  “Don’t.” His lips barely parted around the word.

  Curled like a flannel-cocooned inchworm, his baby emitted a high-pitched mew. Morgan didn’t turn. He stared at the curtain-draped hole and rasped, “Take her with you, okay?”

  “To your house?”

  “To the ranch.” He cast a look at Rick, his taller, younger brother. “I’m no good to her.”

  Of course he’d think that. After everything.

  “You come too,” Rick said, solid, stoic. “Come back with us.”

  Morgan said nothing. The pain coming off him staggered her.

  Rick told him, “We’ll help, Morgan, but you have to come too. Your daughter needs you.” He might not realize the impact of those words, words Morgan had responded to for a different daughter, one he’d tried to save and couldn’t. After losing Kelsey, Jill’s death seemed cruel and excessive.

  A shudder moved through him, sun glinting off new silver threads in his black hair. His indigo eyes looked almost black. His face was gray. He had one foot over the line with the dead. Only Livie held him. If he convinced himself that she and Rick were enough for his baby girl, he might quit altogether. Who wouldn’t?

  Her in-laws, Hank and Celia, stood ready to support the cause, but it was Consuela, his housekeeper, who moved toward him, her face revealing a heart breaking for all he’d lost. “You go with them, Morgan,” she said, her nearly black eyes awash yet fervent, her jaw set. “You go, and you come back.”

  His breath seeped out. “Fine.” He took a step and once in motion kept on until he reached not the limousine that had brought him to the cemetery but his wine-red Maserati GranTurismo, pulsing power and prestige as it sat on the graveyard road that barely contained it.

  Noelle trembled at the thought of him behind the wheel. How many times had she and Rick expected the call that he had died driving drunk? When he actually did crash his Corvette, he’d been stone sober. And he lived. He healed.

  Now it had been Jill and two friends on a moms’ night out—their minivan concealed by the whirling, wind-driven smoke of a sudden wildfire—who’d been hit by a rushing fire truck. There had to be order in that somewhere, but she couldn’t find it. She could only hurt.

  Thin, soundless rain fell unobtrusively as she and Rick joined Morgan at his car. No baby seat, since he never drove Livie in the sports car. Had he parked it there anticipating an unencumbered exit?

  “Morgan . . .” Rick started to speak.

  The older Spencer bent and kissed his baby’s head, then looked up. “I’ll see you out there.”

  She expected Rick to argue, to make him fly back with them, but he only said, “Don’t drive crazy.”

  A dark and humorless smile touched Morgan’s lips as he climbed in. The license plate read MYGRLS—a reminder to come home to the ones he loved? Or a way to have them with him wherever he went. Now he had only Livie. Noelle clutched her protectively.

  Tears streamed down her face as the engine roared and he peeled away. No lingering over food and sympathy with his family, business associates, and hundreds of friends and members of his community all waiting at the reception. Morgan wanted the road. In pain, Morgan always wanted the road.

  She looked up at Rick, whose gaze had landed on tiny Olivia.

  “He won’t leave her, Noelle. It’s not in him.”

  Grief wasn’t a feeling. It was a force, an entity, demanding entrance with the delicacy of a battering ram, and once that wall was breached, once the gates shattered, all hell would break loose. Morgan accelerated, as though speed formed a defense, as if flight could take him far enough, fast enough to keep the grinding pain from crushing him to dust.

  Jill. He couldn’t remember a time he hadn’t loved her. Even the years apart, she’d been there, inside him, invading his memories, haunting his heart. Even in the anger, the betrayal, there’d been want. There’d been knowing she was in the world.

  And
mixed into every moment with Jill, there’d been Kelsey, the daughter he’d thought she aborted. The daughter he’d tried to save from leukemia. He failed then. What made them think he wouldn’t now, with Livie?

  He pressed his eyes shut, even though the Maserati topped a hundred and ten. Then he remembered the road wasn’t his alone and opened his eyes. If he were to fly, he’d do it where no one else paid the price with him. Plenty of places between California and Rick’s ranch in the Colorado mountains.

  He’d experienced that soaring after Kelsey died, a crash that broke his body in so many places he rivaled the Bionic Man, but it hadn’t quit. In her collision, Jill died instantly. Gone so fast there’d been no pain, no prolonged suffering. Just gone. What he wouldn’t give to know that trick.

  Except for Livie.

  In spite of the crushing pain, his heart swelled. Nothing he did, nothing that happened to him, it seemed, could stop that love. He might be no good to her, might fail her as he’d failed Kelsey, and now Jill, but nothing in this world could make him stop trying. Not this pain. Not the rest to come.

  Jill smiled from the photo on his visor, caught unawares and unposed. Beside her, newborn Olivia, and then one of his only pictures of Kelsey before the angels carried her away. Bald and brave and otherworldly, she anointed him with courage, drops of mercy from a pain-perfected soul. His must be utterly grace-resistant to require, once more, this particular scourge.

  CHAPTER

  1

  Quinn liked the way mountains made her feel small—not unusual at five three, a hundred and five, but beneath the towering peaks, she felt minuscule, practically invisible, almost invisible enough.

  She stepped onto her narrow balcony that had no room for furniture but enough to stand and look out and become a human thermometer—valuable in a changeable weather place such as Juniper Falls, Colorado. And climbing over the railing and dangling would make the drop from the bedroom doable—should that ever be necessary.

  Nestled in her tiny cabin’s A-frame peak, her bedroom held a full-sized bed, a closet with built-in drawers, the door to the balcony, and her. Also in the loft was the pint-sized bathroom, shower—no tub—in pale yellow tiles. She climbed down the ladderlike stairs to the living, dining, cooking room. In her cabin, she sometimes felt like Alice biting the wrong side of the mushroom. But it was hers. What could be sweeter?

  Bundling into her boiled-wool coat, she stuffed her dark, curling hair into the hood, went out to her F-150 pickup, and pulled out onto the dirt road. A foggy cloud sat hard on the valleys, revealing bits of grayed scenery—here the dark evergreen arms of trees, there a stone canyon wall with spring water frozen into phantasmal shapes.

  She couldn’t wait until it cleared. The chance to look through what sounded like a sizable estate before anyone else was an opportunity she wouldn’t miss. It was her livelihood. Sometimes she drove hours just to have a look. It usually paid off with at least a few things—sometimes a big fat zero, and every now and then a treasure trove. The spark of discovery quickened in her now.

  She’d lucked out that the estate was in the vicinity, only a few miles away. She didn’t know the deceased. Having lived only six months in Juniper Falls, that applied to most of the live population as well. It also meant she’d barely plumbed the possibilities in the area.

  Families with estates to settle could always list and sell the stuff themselves, wait for the right buyer or collector, package, ship, and insure, and deal with gripes while grieving their loved ones, but she’d found most were perfectly happy to let her make an offer and take all that on herself. For those who got greedy or sentimental, she left her card in case they changed their minds. Many of them did, and not too begrudgingly. She was making a living, not a killing.

  She pulled up to the property, surprised to see a truck in front of the small ranch house. Two cars were in the garage, a blue-and-tan Subaru she guessed was the deceased’s and a white compact marked as a rental. The truck might mean someone else was interested in the estate. Being new to the area, she didn’t yet recognize all her competition. But she’d been promised first look.

  She moved toward the house, her breath mingling with the fog. The doorbell gave a sort of short-circuit buzz that brought no one. Frowning, she stepped away and walked around the side of the house.

  With the mist tightening her spiraled strands, she moved toward barely audible voices. Two women stood at a green metal fence jeweled with condensation. They turned as she approached.

  “Hi there,” said the one whose every blond hair must have been glued in place to hold in the mist. Her slicker barely accommodated her ample hips. “You must be Riley.”

  “Quinn. I’m Quinn Reilly.”

  “Oh, I had it backwards.”

  “It happens.” Way more than it should.

  “I’m RaeAnne.” Her twang made the name sing. “And this is Noelle, from the ranch next to my mom’s here.”

  The other woman had classic Michelle Pfeiffer–style beauty with silky golden-brown hair and natural grace. Caught up in her appraisal, Quinn startled at the snort that preceded a bony black face appearing through the fog. Casting a wary look at the whiskered muzzle frosted with age, she took a step back.

  RaeAnne patted the horse. “Noelle’s offered to pasture Matilda, for what time she has left. Poor old girl.”

  “We have a lot of pasture.” Noelle stroked the skimpy mane. “And Vera loved this horse.”

  “She did.” RaeAnne’s voice tightened. “Even though she came with the house and Mom never sat a horse in her life.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Quinn said.

  “Thanks.” RaeAnne blinked. “But Vera lived independently and passed in her sleep. What more can we ask?”

  Lacking an easy answer, Quinn nodded.

  “Well, come inside.”

  RaeAnne’s hips swung back and forth with her stride. Noelle barely touched the ground, and Quinn just walked. Saying she’d be back for the mare, Noelle left in the Chevy truck—not what she’d picture the woman driving, more like a silver Jaguar.

  “Pretty, isn’t she.” RaeAnne pushed open the back door.

  “You think?”

  They giggled.

  The house had the old-person smell she recognized from similar circumstances—stale and slightly astringent—but RaeAnne must have alerted authorities almost immediately, because there was very little death scent.

  “Well?” RaeAnne cast her gaze around. “Kind of leaves you speechless, doesn’t it?”

  While she hadn’t been buried alive, Vera’d had a lot of things. Quinn took in the packed tables, shelves, cabinets, hutches, and stacks. She could tell at a look that a lot of it didn’t interest her. That left a lot of it that might. “What do you want to happen here, RaeAnne?”

  “Well, there are a few personal things I’ll hang on to. Some of it’s just got to go, and for the things you want . . . whatever’s reasonable, I guess.”

  “It can work two ways,” Quinn told her. “I can purchase only what I might sell, which leaves you dealing with everything else. Or a flat rate buys whatever you don’t choose to keep, and I’ll resell or donate accordingly.”

  “That second way sounds great.” RaeAnne seemed eager to separate from her mother’s things. “I don’t think the furniture will get you much. It’s all secondhand.”

  And not antique, except in the kitchen. They haggled gently, the woman’s genial nature and Quinn’s own professional reserve keeping it civil. It wasn’t about ripping people off. Though she imagined there were sharks in the water who preyed on the bereaved, it raised her hackles when people assumed she operated that way.

  “Keep your stuff,” she wanted to say when people questioned her offer, but she explained the process and the losses she took on things that never sold, not to mention her time. She did them a favor handling the whole lot and sometimes found hidden treasures—the hook for her.

  In Vera’s house, she recognized some popular and hard-to-find piec
es. Her collector’s guides and handbooks would help her know where to start the bidding or set the price. She’d learned a lot but still barely touched the surface of everything out there.

  When they agreed, she gave RaeAnne her card with contact information and said, “I’ll start with the knickknacks, if that’s okay. You can reserve anything you want.”

  “Take them all. Just leave any jewelry for now.”

  “Okay.” Jewelry was often excluded for value or sentimental reasons. She went back into the mist and brought in the lidded containers she kept stacked in the truck bed and cargo area to pack up and carry away the bits and pieces of a life.

  After driving away with a full truckload, Quinn stood in her gray steel edifice lit by hooded bulbs suspended from the ceiling and warmed by space heaters in each corner. The prefab barn was the reason she lived in a dollhouse—that and the selling price. The structure was perfect for collecting, storing, and packing the wares she fostered as each awaited a new home.

  While she hadn’t grown up thinking she’d be an eBay trader, over the last four years she’d developed a knack for finding deals as well as an eye for quality. It didn’t tie her to any physical location and was virtually anonymous, except when she acquired merchandise. Not a bad fit.

  Even so, hours of handling, photographing, and listing other people’s stuff sometimes made her glaze over. She slid the door open to a dry dusting of snow—the tiny pellet kind that struck the mountains anytime from September on and frequently now, as October waned. She’d heard the wind but hadn’t realized it brought a companion.

  Fog, mist, a few moments of sun, and now this, all in one day. Weather in the Rockies. She stepped out and slid the door shut, wind tossing hair across her face as the phone rang in her pocket. “Hello?”

  “Hi, Quinn, it’s RaeAnne Thigley. I’m sorry, but I wonder if I could look through the things you hauled out. There’s a locket I can’t locate that means a lot to me.”